


Resolute

by TabithaJean



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Post-Episode: s03e02 Paper Clip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:20:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26584291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TabithaJean/pseuds/TabithaJean
Summary: Scully spends the night after Melissa passes away at Maggie's house. In the middle of the night she creeps into her mom's room, and both women share a little of their grief with each other.
Relationships: Dana Scully/Margaret Scully, Dana Scully/Melissa Scully
Kudos: 2





	Resolute

**Author's Note:**

> I was just thinking about what that first night after Melissa’s death must have been like for Scully and Maggie. That’s all :) I wanted to explore how Maggie would comfort when she herself is so hurt, and how Scully would cut through any guilt to be there for Maggie. 

‘Mom?’

‘Dana?’ 

‘Yeah.’

‘Can’t sleep?’

‘No,’ Scully says, her voice high-pitched and tender against the quiet of the night.

‘Me either.’ Maggie peels back the covers and Scully climbs into the bed, training her eyes on the shadow of the damp stain on the ceiling as her mom rearranges the quilt over her, stroking her cheek as she would after her childhood nightmares. Scully wishes she could have been better prepared for the real horrors of the world.

They face each other, noses inches apart, close enough for Maggie’s bitter breath to scuttle across Scully’s cheek, close enough for Scully’s defences to melt under the steady spotlight of Maggie’s eyes. One dark, one red, a photographic negative of each other. 

‘Bill’s flying in tomorrow,’ Maggie says. ‘Did I mention?’

‘You did,’ Scully gulps. ‘You mentioned that.’

‘And Father McCue will stop by tomorrow to help with the arrangements.’

Scully’s throat tightens, a hand stealing across her neck. Her own hand, she realises. Her larynx bobs as she swallows. She feels bruised, and squeezes her eyes shut in protection against her mother’s gaze. ‘Mom… please,’ she moans, a low growl from the depths of her, sending vibrations through her skin to her hand. 

She rolls onto her back, keeping her eyes shut against the stain on the ceiling. She’s offended by its audacity to resist all attempts to remove it, angered that its material presence proves to be more durable than that of her sister.

‘I didn’t stop her,’ Scully tightly, her face clenched against the familiar tide of grief.

‘What do you mean, sweetheart?’ Maggie asks. She strokes Scully’s cheek again, having always sought contact, sought proximity with her children.

‘I got in that car with Skinner…. And I didn’t think of her.’

The physicality of putting her thoughts into words crushes her. She inhales deeply, holding her breath in protest. Her lungs are fat and inflated, two buoys bobbing in the sea. The pressure builds into a burn, and she imagines Missy’s fire dancing and raging against the confines of her chest. She will go to her sister’s apartment. She will seek out her crystals and search for her, finally believing in the energy of the human spirit, for where does a healthy thirty-three year old woman go, how does all that she was just disappear?

Tingling in her head as the pressure builds, but she can’t let go now, can’t release the valve, can’t extinguish Melissa, can’t take another breath when her sister can’t, when her sister’s last breath was taken over eight hours ago already, that’s a third of a day without her, and Dana is lying in the bed with her mom under the stain which was there before they even moved all those years ago.

‘Dana,’ Maggie commands, a veiled Descartes confirming _you are_ to Melissa’s _you are not_. Scully opens her eyes and her dignity, her pride, escape through her sudden and violent exhale. She rolls back towards her mother, empty and defeated. As a hermit crab crawls towards its new home, Scully now occupies the place denied to another daughter. Maggie grasps her hand under the quilt, and it’s clumsy, their fingers knocking against each other awkwardly.

‘It should have been me,’ Scully mutters, and the air stills around the shape of her betrayal.

‘ _Dana_ ,’ Maggie warns. This moment, this night, is not for Scully. She grips her mom’s fingers in apology _._ ‘Thank _God_ you’re here. I thank God every day.’

She hears in Maggie’s voice the tremble of a trapped bird flapping its wings against unforgiving brick, growing more panicked with each failed attempt to escape.

Maggie has already been here, Scully realises suddenly. Her legs burn with the shame of neglecting it. Maggie has already mourned a daughter, already spent sleepless nights bargaining with God to bring her back. This family already had one miracle, of course they don’t get a second. Scully tries to imagine what Melissa did in the mirror image of this night. She slips her arm under her mother’s neck and pulls her close, Maggie’s head resting on her chest, where her confident heartbeat whispers secret assurances to Maggie.

‘It’s _never_ a zero-sum choice,’ Maggie says angrily. ‘It’s not about you _or_ Melissa. I love you both so much. I just want you both.’ Maggie’s shoulders shake as she starts to cry, in the ugly and unguarded way one can when the night is long enough to soak up any amount of tears. ‘Dana, I just want you both. Oh, Melissa. Oh, my girl.’

Scully runs her fingers through her mother’s hair, her face blank. The Hail Mary loops in her mind as she finds an absolution of sorts in bearing witness to her mother’s pain.

Maggie stills, growing heavy as she relaxes into exhausted sleep. Scully remembers a conversation she’d had with Mulder earlier that day - god had it really been that same day - where he shared that his mother had been forced to look directly at a choice between her children. The consequence of her indecision has branded the Mulder family so severely, marking a permanent fork in their family path. Scully has a little more sympathy for Teena Mulder, glassy-eyed and never quite present. Her life is a perpetual Tantalean punishment, where the love she has for her son is equally and horrifically balanced with the cost of that same love for her daughter.

Scully pulls Maggie tighter, who is pliant and vulnerable in sleep. Indecision and inertia will result in stasis, in a blunting of instinct and justice, she decides, thinking once again of Teena Mulder. Her sister deserves more. Her mother deserves more. As she walks through the valley of the shadow of Melissa’s death, Scully makes a promise to God, the only promise she can make that will properly equip her for the task ahead: she will fear no evil.


End file.
